


You're Not You

by throttlegainwell



Series: Alliterative Allies [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 12:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12035805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throttlegainwell/pseuds/throttlegainwell
Summary: Jessica objects to some of Matt's habits.





	You're Not You

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt at the DD kinkmeme: "Jessica's fine with Matt, except when he describes something that Kilgrave did to her that someone else did to him (Stick, Elektra, maybe even Foggy or Karen) and insists it wasn't really abuse or couldn't possibly be abusive at all. It drives her nuts and makes her want to punch him."
> 
> Warnings for disordered eating, discussion of Stick's abuse, discussion of Kilgrave's abuse.

“I don’t need your freaky senses to hear your stomach growling from all the way over here,” Jessica finally insisted, shifting uncomfortably on the ice cold AC unit under her ass. “Just take the damn protein bar.”

They’d already been on this roof for most of the night, and in the dead of winter, it’d be dark for a few more hours yet while they waited for the drop to happen. They’d been at this every night for the past week, and while Jessica could go home and sleep all day, Murdock had a day job to get to, and the effects were beginning to show. He’d already badly sprained his hand freelancing, but she’d pretended not to notice. Until she’d worked with him for a few months, she’d been convinced that she was not only a candidate for Most Dysfunctional Asshole of the Year, but the sole running contender. Now she was realizing that she had competition for that title. Mostly it was irritating. Occasionally she had to be The Responsible One, and that alone rankled her.

“It’s mostly carbohydrates,” Murdock said tightly. “It’s basically candy. And I’m focusing. Food is a distraction.”

“If I had candy,” she said, keeping her voice very carefully calm and ignoring the bullshit half of what he’d said, “then I’d force-feed you that. This is what I’ve got, and I don’t want to carry your ass down off of this roof when you pass out from low blood sugar. If you’re not going to take a shift off to sleep, you should at least try to stay alert.”

“Wouldn’t happen.”

She scoffed. “Why, is that one of your lesser known super powers?”

“No, that’s _training_. Mind controls the body.”

Her stomach roiled a little at that particular phrasing, but she ignored it. “You get that from a fortune cookie?” She felt around in her pocket for her flask, pushing aside a few more bars to reach it. His head tilted in suspicion at the noise, like he thought she might really grab him and shove food down his stubborn throat.

Honestly, she should have known. It wasn’t like any of them had lead lives of respected autonomy. But she still paused with the mouth of her flask tilted halfway to her lips when he answered.

“From Stick,” he said quietly but firmly, and she knew he was worn thinner than she’d realized when he continued despite how private he normally was. “He was a dick, but he taught me that my body wasn’t just an overstimulated prison; it could be a tool. A weapon.”

She had a few answers to that, but she picked the most mild of the bunch. “You say that like that’s not the most dickish part of all.”

He rolled his shoulders, settling back into his lookout position. “He took a lot from me, but that was what he gave me in return.”

“What, he trained you on an empty stomach or something?” She’d known that there was more to that Stick guy than the others seemed to have realized, but a pit was starting to form in her gut as her mind raced to consider, for the first time, how far that control might have extended.

“He taught me how to transcend my body’s needs and do what  _I_ needed to do. Relieve pain without medication, function without food, ignore the distractions…”

“To trick your body.”

“That’s not what happened.”

Maybe it was the half flask of Wild Turkey already warming her from the inside out, but her response was swift, brutal, and thoughtless. “He took a traumatized little boy, starved him, _beat_ him, and convinced him to ignore his body’s responses and needs, as if your body isn't _you_ already. Sounds pretty fucked up, Horns.” She was nauseated just thinking about it, but even she couldn’t hear it in her voice. They never could.

“That’s just how training works at that level,” he said, “to be effective. I know better than anyone that he took advantage of vulnerable children for his agenda, and I’m still angry about it, but in this case, I’d have been worse-off without it. You have no idea what it was like to not … be able to control this.”

And she couldn’t help herself, because maybe she’d gotten a little attached to the big red weirdo and she liked him best with his blood in his body where it belonged, so she got mad, and because she couldn’t pummel the dead, she lashed out at the evidence instead. Needless suffering always pissed her off, and justifying it was worse.

“So I’d have been worse-off if Kilgrave hadn’t made me ignore my body’s needs,” she said, voice rising in pitch, “and go days without food because he hadn’t found the perfect four-star restaurant yet and he was too much of a snob to just let me eat normal food. I was better off when he convinced me that I wasn’t really hungry, anyway, and I could wait, maybe even could stand to lose a pound or two so he was doing me a favor. That it would all be worth it once I had tried whatever ridiculous fancy shit he’d gotten it in his head to try. When he wouldn’t let me get a glass of _water_ because tap wasn’t good enough and his expensive unicorn piss hadn’t been delivered yet. When he convinced me I wasn't tired because he wanted me awake to entertain him when I was dead on my feet.”

She’d never said that much about her shitty experiences to Murdock. Hadn’t even really talked about them much at all with anyone. Sometimes it was just easier to be honest with someone at least half as broken as she was. It surprised her, how determined she felt about this one. But she could always spot brainwashing at work these days, even the subtle kind, and she couldn’t just leave it to play out its horrors on repeat when she had the chance to knock the reel loose.

He winced. “That’s awful, but this is different.”

“Why? Because I’m a _victim_ and he convinced you that you had _purpose_ , that there was reason in what he did to you?”

“Because I’m in control. Because I learned how to _use_ it.”

And maybe the steel in his voice presented a challenge to most people, but Jessica had been known to bend metals of all kinds with her bare hands. She counted backwards, slowly, in her head.

Jessica’s relationship with her body was complex and not static, but she knew one thing for certain. “No, Stick is still in control, because he convinced you to ignore your body’s basic needs. I may be a drunk, but I sleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, and shit when it happens. Your body’s first line of defense is its ability to regulate its needs and tell you when you’re due for an update. It hurts so you’ll pay attention and fix what’s wrong, not ignore it and keep staking out rooftops. It tells you you’re tired when it needs to recharge so you don’t put yourself in completely unnecessary danger by being too groggy to notice someone sneak up on you. And when it fucking growls at you, you feed it. I’m no pillar of health, but even I put in the bare minimum to stay functional. It’s not a distraction; it’s a fucking necessity.” Her voice softened. “He convinced you to overlook what your body was telling you, that its needs were just suggestions you could ignore. But that’s why they’re needs. If they were optional, we’d call them something else. And if he tricked you into disregarding something as basic as your body’s limits, he could have been gaslighting you about anything.”

“I’m sorry that happened, but making it sound like I’m completely unaware of those limits isn’t factual. I just push them. I make an informed choice to do that.”

She could see that he was getting a second wind from the indignation alone, but between the tremor in his injured hand and the spasmodic, involuntary flexing of his muscles, she could tell he was wavering. Maybe he wouldn’t tip right over, maybe he still wouldn’t even go down easily in a real fight, but there was no way he’d win one. He’d get himself killed.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, grateful for a squeamishly uncomfortable moment that he couldn’t see her face. “So when he wanted to get kinky and push my body’s limits to see what he could do to it, when he told me that it didn’t hurt so I was convinced that it didn’t no matter what he…” She could actually feel the bile rising.

“Jesus, Jess.”

She laughed, and it was ugly. “Language, altar boy.” She paused. “Did he tell you it didn’t really hurt?”

Matt hesitated. “He told me that I didn’t really know pain … but that if I kept crying, I would.”

“But it did hurt, didn’t it?”

He bowed his head before he answered. “Every time.”

Matt’s abilities were considerable and even kind of amazing, something that, as a PI, she could appreciate, and there was no question that he was tough, but it didn’t extend as far as any enhanced healing. He was still the most breakable of them. She wondered how much scar tissue his body carried around from neglected injuries alone, whether his metabolism went into a frenzy every time he skipped a meal, thinking it was being sidelined yet again in lieu of some greater purpose.

“I’m sorry about that jab,” she said, changing tracks because she couldn’t stay on this road any longer. “You know, with the force-feeding thing. I wouldn’t really do that. No one can make decisions about your body but you. And you know it better than anyone else because it’s yours. But if you need something, just do it. You have to eat just like the rest of us sometime. You don’t have to prove shit to that asshole.”

Matt didn’t do feelings any better than she did, but for a moment it seemed like he was going to say something. Instead he held out his hand and caught the energy bar when she tossed it over. He ate in silence, disappeared the wrapper somewhere in his red pajamas, and cocked his head at her. “Thanks,” he said, just the way she preferred her gratitude: brief and not overly sentimental.

“Yeah, well,” she said, unwrapping one for herself and answering with her mouth full, “you know what they say about when you’re hungry.”


End file.
